- In its essence a parlay bet is a wager on two or more different events and the bettor wins only when all wagers are winners. There are different forms of parlay bets that would allow you to win even if one or more of the bets in the parlay are losers, but we will focus solely on the regular parlay in this article.
- How does parlay betting work? First off, find the games you want to bet on and make sure they are smart bets. Parlay betting is more of a high-risk style of betting, but you still want to be smart about bet.
Before we go any further, we need to explain what a parlay is fully.
Payouts on a 2 team parlay are standard throughout the industry at 13/5. Sportsbooks will pay $2.64 for every $1.00 wagered.
In order to win the entire bet, you have to win each of the individual bets on your parlay. If you lose one individual bet, then you lose the entire parlay bet.
The reason is that the sportsbook will pay you out much more money for correctly picking multiple individual bets together.There is more risk in this type of bet so it should be expected that we are offered a higher reward for making this wager.
Let’s compare betting three games individually versus betting them as a parlay.
Let’s assume that each game is -110 moneyline odds.
Let’s also assume that our bankroll for these three games is $300. We’re going to look at the scenarios if we picked all three games correctly and if we only picked two of the games correctly.
If we bet the games individually, we would bet $100 per game.
| Game | Bet Amount | Odds | Outcome | Profit/Loss |
| Game 1 | $100 | -110 | Win | $90.91 |
| Game 2 | $100 | -110 | Win | $90.91 |
| Game 3 | $100 | -110 | Win | $90.91 |
How To Win Parlay Bets
Now, what would happen if we picked all three games as a parlay bet? This time, we would place a single bet of $300. We will go over how to calculate parlay payouts in the section below here, but for now, we have done the calculations for you.
The profit on this bet as a parlay would be $1787.40! Even if we only bet $100 total, we would see a profit of $595.80. As you can see, you can bet 1/3 of the amount you bet total in the individual games and still make more than double what you would betting the games individually.
At this point, a lot of people are wondering why you would ever bet anything but parlays. You can bet less and make so much more! Well, as you are probably guessing, there is more to the story.
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Let’s look at what happens in our same example, except this time we only pick two out of the three games correctly. We bet the same games again for $100 each individually, and we are correct on two out of the three games.
| Game | Bet Amount | Odds | Outcome | Profit/Loss |
| Game 1 | $100 | -110 | Win | $90.91 |
| Game 2 | $100 | -110 | Win | $90.91 |
| Game 3 | $100 | -110 | Loss | ($100.00) |
If we bet all three of the games as a parlay for $300 (or $100), our profit is negative $300 or negative $100. If you get even one game wrong in a parlay, you lose the entire bet. You’ve now seen the downside to parlays.
How To Parley
Even if you only get one game correct betting them individually, you’re only going to lose $109. If you bet the same $300 on a parlay, though, you lose the entire $300. The risk is higher for parlays, but the associated reward is also higher.